


Lost Things

by LadyFangs



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Heartbreak, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 10:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20740763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyFangs/pseuds/LadyFangs
Summary: Octavia Muss learns the hard way about Joe Miller.





	Lost Things

**Lost Things**

“Octavia Muss, reporting, sir.”

She’s arrived to the Captain’s office early. The department is largely empty, save for a few techs behind cubicles. She can see them working below through the glass walls of Shaddid’s upper floor quarters. Everything is clear and white and sparse, here. The woman herself, dressed in a dark suit, her hair hanging loosely about her shoulders. She barely looks up from her study of files before her on the desk. Octavia stands on the other side, quietly. For a moment, she wonders if Shaddid heard her.

“Muss,” the captain says, still not looking up. “Formerly of the Crimes Against Persons Division.” Her fingers skim the screen in front of her. Octavia’s open file. “Rapes. That’s a tough one. So, who’d you piss off to get busted down here?”

“Sir?”

Finally, Shaddid looks at her, smirking as she crosses her arms on her chest and takes a long look at Octavia Muss.

“Who’d you piss off? The only people who work this beat are those who have no choice. You obviously did. So, who’d you piss off, Detective?”

“My captain tried to grab my ass and I grabbed his balls and squeezed. Hard,” she says, returning Shaddid’s look with a straight stare of her own. The women ponder each other a moment, and Octavia wonders what the Captain is looking for. Shaddid snorts gently, a tinge of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, and Muss returns it with a light smirk of her own.

“Well, I’m under orders to make it ‘difficult’ for you, but given your history, I doubt much of anything will rise to that,” the Captain says. “You’re on district patrol. Oh, and I’ve assigned you a partner. Detective Miller,” her neutral tone has changed and the name comes with a bit of bite to it, matched by a near-invisible grimace. Octavia catches it.

“You don’t like him?”

“He’s a belter,” Shaddid says, as if that says it all.

Not many of those in Star Helix. In fact, Octavia thinks on whether she’s come across other belters serving in the security forces. A belter policing belters. That can’t make him popular—not with his people, nor is colleagues.

“I can handle it,” she says.

“I’ve got no doubt,” Shaddid tells her, coming from around the desk and standing in front of one of the glass walls with a line of sight directly onto the operations floor. It’s filling up with more people now. The captain checks her watch, and, as if on cue, a dark figure walks in and leans up against the wall toward the back of the room, mores observing, separate from the rest of the detectives.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s keep intros short, and get you guys on the street.”

Octavia follows her out of the office and down the stairs. Seeing the approach, the rest of the squad gathers toward the middle of the room.

Shaddid makes the general announces, acknowledges Octavia but doesn’t reveal her story to the rest, and sends everyone on their way.

“Miller,” she calls once most have disbanded. He’s been there the whole time, still hanging back, but upon her call, walks forward, hands in the pockets of his long, slightly shabby knee-length coat, shoulders hunched forward. But what she notices, is that she can’t see his face, under the fedora on his head. Not until he’s standing directly before them does she even get a mere glimpse of his face. But can’t look long, because Shaddid is talking.

“Miller, meet your new partner, Octavia Muss. Show her the district.” He quirks an eyebrow but says nothing, lips drawn tight. Octavia notices him looking at her with an expression she can’t read, and stares at him right back. Finally, he nods in acquiescence, or annoyance, she thinks as he turns to leave.

Shaddid looks at her with a “well?” expression and she realizes that’s a cue to follow Miller out of the station.

They hit the crowded streets, and she has to walk faster just to keep up with his long, even strides.

“Miller!” She calls, getting pushed further behind as she tries to weave in and out of the crowd.

“Miller!” until all she can really make of him is the top of the hat, and his back. Shit. He’s heading toward the trains.

By the time she finally catches up to him, she’s flushed from the exertion and pissed at his nonchalant attitude.

“Oh. You made it,” he says, glancing down at her. She’s about to tell him where to shove it, but her protestations are silenced by the rushing sound of the approaching train. It vibrates the platform where they stand.

The doors open, Miller steps in and she follows. He takes hold of a rail on the sidewall, and she does the same.

“You don’t look like you’ve ever been lower than midtown,” he remarks, as the train lurches forward, pushing people into each other with the jerkiness of the start. Miller looks unfazed. “Let me guess. You got demoted, and I’m your punishment.”

By now, she’s fuming. And decides to let him know it.

“I don’t like it any more than you do. So we tolerate each other at work. And you can fuck off afterward. Deal?”

He snorts, but says nothing. After a 20-minute ride, and the rotation of passengers in and out, the train finally groans to the stop marking the district. The doors open, and Octavia has to stifle her gasp.

Miller was right. She’s never been lower than the midtown district, and it’s almost like stepping into a completely different world. Where the midtown level features open promenades and modified domes meant to mimic earth day and nights, and the seasons, the district is dark, lit only by neon signs of packed stores, and fires from pop-up vendors lining the streets. Everything feels dirtier, grittier here, and she realizes for the first time, how truly out-of-place Miller was at the station—his darkness like a stain on the white, walls and shining floors of Star Helix’s facilities. Here, though. He’s just one of the crowd, save for the hat, a signal of a type of otherness, she cannot fix.

Miller is obviously of them, but as they walk, her by his side, she begins to notice the stares directed at him.

Some clear out of the path as they go but others are bolder, whispering as they pass. When a belter approaches and deliberately bumps into Miller though, his reflections are swift—grabbing the man by the back of his shirt and spinning them out of the street and onto the sidewalk before lifting the man from his feet and jacking up against a wall. The man’s head hits with a dull thud.

“Dammit,” she hisses to herself, hand on her service weapon while threading her way through the crowded street toward her partner. She comes behind him and points her gun at the assailant.

“I got this,” Miller tells her, still holding on to the man, now uttering a string of insults in patois. The words make her heat with anger.

“Hey! You know attacking a Star Helix officer is punishable by--”

“Fyah fi yuh!”

“Back off, Muss,” Miller yells at her this time. Turning his head only slightly in her direction. People nearby are beginning to coalesce around them in a small crowd, drawn in by the curiosity of the belters at each other’s throats.

Noticing what’s happening around her, and aware of the ongoing hostilities in the belt, Muss lowers her weapon and allows Miller to handle it. He does, with a hard fist to the man’s gut, doubling him over, and another to the chin, making his head snap back. The man falls to the ground, and Miller puts his boot on his throat.

“Watch your step,” he says, before stepping over the prone body and strides off, flashing his badge to ward off any would-be defenders.

“Why’d you do that?” Muss asks, when they get further down the street.

“I grew up alone,” he tells her. “A friend once told me, you want to be the ass or the boot. I chose to be the boot.”

They lapse into silence. The rest of the shift is uneventful, and once they get back to the station to end the shift, he goes her way, and she goes hers, thinking about what Miller said.

**.**

.

She’s still not sure of him, even after six months of working together. He’s not exactly volunteered more information about himself. She’s not inquired, even though everyone at the station, it seems, has their own theory.

_“Traitor.”_

_“Heard he killed his parents.”_

_“Heard he killed his wife.”_

_“Didn’t know he had a wife.”_

_“Outcast.”_

_“Loner.”_

** _Welwalla…_ **

The rest of the detectives look at her with sympathy. Some, even pity.

“Hey, if he ever drops, I’d love to be your partner.” Usually said with a leer. She’s the only woman working in the district at the moment. The department is mostly male.

That stops soon enough though, when Captain Shaddid, having overheard some of it, leaks some of the details of Octavia’s file, including the extensive medial report done on her former superior. The urologists' details were…colorful. After that, no one offers to be her partner again.

They’re again down in the district. She’s acclimated to it quickly. The smells no longer accost her. Now, she can discern the scent of street food. Miller’s taken her to some of the best spots serving imitation chicken curry, and she’s taken to it like a fly to honey. One thing she gives him; the man knows his way around good food.

“Where to, today?” She asks as they stroll side-by-side. He’s slowed down a bit, for her, and she keeps her pace better these days with him. It’s been a long, uneventful shift, but she was late and skipped breakfast in order to be on time for shift. Her stomach isn’t amused though, and a very audible rumble emanating from her belly reflects her body’s protestations.

Miller looks down at the top of Muss’s head and chuckles.

A laugh. She looks up at him surprised and catches the smile. And the dimples. She didn’t know he had dimples. Despite herself, she laughs a bit too.

“I know a spot,” he says, turning down an alley. There are fewer people in it, and they can move more freely. “But I got to make a stop first. Stay here a sec.”

She does, watching as a person steps out to meet Miller as he approaches. They’re too far away to hear what words are exchanged, but she sees the man reach into his pocket, pull out some currently and hand it to Miller. He pockets it, not bother counting, and they part.

Octavia blinks, too startled by what she thinks she just saw to speak when he comes back to her.

Ready?” He talks like nothing happened, and when they walk past the place where the exchange was made, she glances at it, and immediately recognize it for what it is. She’s busted numerous pimps, rescued little kids and women alike from it, and she turns on him in fury.

“You really are shit,” she snarls, pointing at the building. “Bribes, Miller? So it’s true what they say about you.”

If she expected any sort of reaction, she doesn’t get one. He brushes past her and keeps walking, silently.

“I ought to report you!” She says.

Still nothing.

“Do you even realize what you’ve done? How could— “

Two little boys, no older than 12, tall and skinny, their shirts dirty, pants with holes, come running up to him, and to her surprise, he bends down to come face-to-face with them.

“Hey kids,” he says, voice lighter now, softer as he reaches into the pocket that he put the bribe money in, and pulls out the same stack of bills.

He speaks to the children, voice low, and they throw their arms around him and squeeze his neck tightly, before running off. Miller watches them go a moment, before standing up again.

“Still hungry?” He asks her, but not looking.

Mutely, she can only nod.

Later, over lunch in a quiet little hole-in-the-wall, he answers the questions she’s not asked, but now weigh on her mind.

“When I was young, it was just me and my friend. We scrapped together. Fought together. Stole to survive. You see how we belters live. Imagine what it’s like for those with no parents. These kids got no one. I’m no one. But I see myself in them.”

He’s so forthright, it makes her ache a bit. There’s no trace of self-pity in his voice. Only a certain type of matter-of-factness about it that makes her feel sad.

Their lives are so different. She’s got family. He has none. She grew up between Earth and the Medina level. He’s been under all his life. Octavia thinks she understands him a bit more.

.

.

He’s her partner. She’s his.

A year into this, and she knows he has her back, and she has his. She trusts Miller with her life. What she doesn’t yet know is whether she trusts him with her heart.

That part is…complicated.

It was a long night. They got off late, after a major break in a case they’d been working for months. The arrest was satisfying, and Miller had treated her to that rare smile of his, with dimples.

“Drinks. My treat.”

He kept that promise and they’d drunk. A lot.

The rest was…uncertain.

She remembers laughing, remembers him smirking, remembers draping her arms around his neck, his hands about her hips to steady her. They were on the Midtown level, just a few blocks from her flat, and he’d helped her stumble home.

Muss blames it on the alcohol.

How she’d looked at him, really looked at him, and noted the softness of his eyes, the wide, fullness of his mouth that made her want to just…

Did she kiss him first? Or did he make the first move?

All she knows is she woke up naked, and still hungover. Rolling over, she thumped into a body. That’s what woke her. When she opened her eyes and realized her partner was next to her. And he was every bit as naked as she was.

They did not speak of it for weeks.

Or rather, Miller had tried, but she’d dismissed it.

“We should discuss it once, at least,” he’d said.

“Nothing to talk about. It was just once. And I was drunk. Shit happens.”

She’s the defensive one. He’s not.

Their colleagues give them a wider berth, sensing the underlying tension between them.

Even Captain Shaddid notes it.

“Everything okay with you and Miller?” She asks on a day when Muss is in the office doing the paperwork Miller hates.

“It’s fine**,**” she tells her boss.

“I met my husband on the job,” Shaddid says.

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“Not anymore. I lost my husband because of the job,” the captain says. “Just some advice. Woman to woman.”

Octavia decides its high time she and Miller talked about it.

She ends up on his lap. Riding him.

They wind up in her bed, her leg draped across his, his arms pulling her close to his chest, her head tucked under his chin, her fingers playing with his chest hair as he gently kisses her forehead, and plays with her hair.

For some reason, it feels right. Feels perfect.

She doesn’t want it any other way.

.

.

Slowly, Octavia Muss begins to allow herself to dream. To consider the future. Possibilities, with a man she quietly thinks she’s in love with.

“I’m no good for you,” he'd told her, but it’s always said lovingly, and she thinks she understands why. Because he was an orphan as a child, an outcast as a man. Lonely and alone.

“I was married once,” he tells her one night when they’re at home. Her home. He’s always here, it seems. So much so his smell has become a part of her space, and she loves it. It’s in all her fabrics. The couch, the bed the sheets, her clothes. She smells like him. He’s marked her as his.

“What happened?”

“She got tired of my bullshit. And I don’t blame her at all for it.”

Again, the blunt assessment strikes a chord within her. Makes her heartache.

“It takes two,” she tries, but he shakes his head.

“You’re too good for me,” he tells her, brushing her hair out her face and leaning in to kiss her. She loves his kisses. Passionate. Gentle. So much of him is hard, but his lovemaking is always sweet. Intense. He treats her as if she’s precious to him. As if he is a drowning man, and she’s his air.

“What do you think about?” He asks her. “What do you want from us? From me?”

So, she drops what remains of her guard and opens her heart, and tells him.

“I…can’t…” He says, not looking at her for the first time in their conversation. She doesn’t understand.

“But, we can be alright,” she whispers. “I’m willing…”

“No, Tavi. I mean…” he shakes his head gently as if struggling to find the right words before exhaling, long and deep. “I put my swimmers on ice,” he explains. “A long time ago. I don’t want any kid growing up like me. All I’d do is fuck ‘em up. Besides, this life, it’s no place for children. Beats them down. Steals their innocence. Their humanity.” In this, the lover disappears and the jaded, cynic emerges again.

It’s the first time he makes her cry. It will not be the last, but it will be the only time he sees her tears.

.

.

She requests a departmental transfer. Captain Shaddid doesn’t grant it, but she does assign Octavia a new partner. Miller gets one, too.

It puts distance between them. Absence makes the heart grow tougher. She drapes herself in the armor of work. Wraps the cloak of distance around her shoulders. She was good before him. She’ll be fine after him.

She accepts new dates.

She forces herself to smile and enjoy herself and have fun. But she never brings any of them home.

The rare times they’re in the office together, she sees him watching her with an expression on his face that looks like regret. She ignores those heavy stares. Ignores it when he tries to pull her aside. “Can we talk?” He asks. She shakes her head. Moves intentionally away, into the open office, knowing he won’t follow there. Too many people in the space, too many eyes. He’s a private person. So is she. Neither wants a scene.

On occasion, she catches glimpses of the top of his hat, the trail of his coat. She knows when she’s just missed him. She knows his scent so well.

Most of all, she hears…things.

_Washed up._

_Drunk._

_A joke._

_Sabaka…_

It’s all she can do to keep from screaming at them. _You don’t know him! She wants to shout. You don’t understand. _That’s the remnants of her love, she knows. Joe’s a grown man. He can take care of himself. He doesn’t need her to defend him.

If he hears any of it, he never shows it. And while it makes her heartache, she forces it to roll off her—if he cannot care, she shouldn’t either. It’s what got her into this. Caring too much. You can’t love someone who doesn’t love himself. Some lost things will always stay that way.

**.**

**.**

Some nights she wakes with a pillow between her legs, her body wet with sweat, thrumming on the edge, but the release, just out of reach because the man that triggers those is no longer within reach.

What she doesn’t know, is that alone, in his own flat, he suffers the same. But pride won’t let him apologize. Besides, he tried to warn her it would end like this.

He is not a religious man, but he contemplates deliverance.

Death would be nice, but he’s too stubborn to go easily.

Salvation comes in the form of mystery. Mystery allows him to lose himself. To it, he gives himself completely in a way he could have never done before. Not even with her.

It’s wrong. He knows it’s wrong but does it anyway. He tries to slip away quietly but is compelled to reach out to her one last time, hoping she’ll come. Hoping she won’t.

She does anyway, and he’s forced to stare into the face that holds all his wishes, wants and regrets.

It’s too late for him.

But it’s not too late for her.

That’s what Joe tells himself to make it all better, before packing it all up and giving himself over to oblivion, obsession.


End file.
